Lou’s View: HAUNTED IS THE NEW BLACK
By Lou Bernard
Along the border of Clinton and Potter Counties is an area called the Black Forest. If all of the legends are to be believed, this is one seriously weird, wild area. A man named Robert Lyman has filled up at least two books about it, telling stories and legends from the area, and various hauntings and strange events are plentiful.
Lyman defines the Black Forest as “Potter and parts of all contiguous counties.” He includes Kettle Creek in there, and says,”In the Black Forest there is no place more strange, fantastic and romantic than the valley called Kettle.” Which is cool, because Kettle Creek State Park has always been one of my big favorites. It’s said to be home to a water monster called the Susquehanna Seal. Dorcie Calhoun claimed to use psychic abilities to find gas there. And UFOs were sighted in the skies by Hiram Cranmer, local postmaster who seemed to be something of a magnet for the paranormal.
Another fun state park in that area is Ole Bull State Park, where a prominent musician planned a series of communities. It fell through because he was the victim of a con, and it’s said that you can hear Ole Bull’s ghost, still playing his violin in the forest.
Lyman says that giants lived in the area once. He mentions the discovery of giant skulls with horns in Bradford County, and explains that in 1886, a man named Scoville discovered eight-foot skeletons that were hundreds of years old in a burial mound.
There is said to be a headless man haunting the area around Kettle Creek. According to the story, a French explorer named Etienne Brule found a silver mine that belonged to the Native Americans, and they beheaded him for trying to steal the silver. It’s said that his headless ghost still roams the area.
The missing head of Brule is somewhat balanced out by the skull of Mark McCoy, a robber who lived in the area. After committing murder and then hanging himself, his body was buried by the local sheriff. His skull, however, was found and dug up by dogs, and then hung in the door to a cabin. The skull was said to scream in the night, frightening neighbors sometimes miles away.
Another ghost in the area is Amandon Baker, a Civil War veteran buried in Potter County. During the Civil War, footwear was badly needed, and some of that must have stuck with Baker. He is often seen walking near his grave, up and down the road, carrying his boots in one hand.
In 1923, the ghost of a barefoot girl was spotted in the Kettle Creek area by two local men. “She had no face that we could see but the rest of her body was clearly visible,” said one of them later. “She was barefooted and her clothes were tattered and torn. She was a forlorn and sad looking sight indeed.”
The Black Forest area may be home one of the earliest ghosts in Clinton County. Hiram Cranmer claimed that he could hear a murder re-enacted every summer. In September of 1856, Jake Pfoutz shot a local man named William Hall, though some sources have a different name for the victim. According to Cranmer, if you’re in the right place at the right time, somewhere near Kettle Creek, you can hear the sound of the shot and the victim falling out of his chair.
If ghosts and old legends interest you, you may want to consider taking a drive up to the Black Forest. Statistically, if you hang out there for an hour or so, you’re pretty likely to encounter something fairly weird.
